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Videos of Screen Readers with Basic HTML5 and ARIA Landmarks

With the rapid development in certain user agents (take that, Firefox!), I'm a little late in getting these up, but I figure some of them are still useful to share. In any case, I posted to YouTube five videos of various screen readers interacting with basic HTML5 section elements and ARIA landmarks. These are videos I presented at the 2011 Accessibility Summit and OZeWAI 2011 conferences.

NVDA 2011.2 in FF6 with basic HTML5 section elements

In Firefox only, the header, footer, and nav elements are identified as landmarks. Note that in Firefox versions 7, 8 , and 9, header elements are no longer identified as banner landmarks, and aside elements are now identified as complementary landmarks. Otherwise, the behaviour is identical.

NVDA 2011.2 in FF6 with HTML5 and ARIA Landmark Roles

With the exception of the application and form landmarks, all landmark roles are recognised by NVDA in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. In this test case, Firefox 6 identifies the header and footer elements inside the article as banner and contentinfo landmarks, even though they do not have express ARIA landmark role attributes. In Firefox 7–9, the header element is no longer registered as a landmark, but footer still is.

JAWS 13 in IE9 with HTML5 and ARIA Landmark Roles

JAWS recognises all landmark roles. However, both region and article ARIA document structure roles are also announced as landmarks. JAWS also misrepresents the heading structure: see JAWS, IE and Headings in HTML5.

VoiceOver in Safari 5.1 with HTML5 and ARIA Landmark Roles

VoiceOver announces all landmark roles except for form landmarks.

Window-Eyes 7.5.0 in IE9 with HTML5 and ARIA Landmark Roles

Window-Eyes 7.5.0 has serious problems in Internet Explorer where HTML5 and ARIA landmarks are concerned, but not in Firefox. Fortunately, these issues have been corrected in Window-Eyes version 7.5.1.